Professional Preparation

Ph.D. - Developmental Psychology University of Michigan - 1981

M.A. - Human Development University of Kansas - 1975

B.A. - Psychology Oberlin College - 1974

Research Areas

Research Interests

My research focuses on children's environmental contexts particularly children's home experiences and child-care experiences and how they relate to the child's development. I study linkages both within and across environmental contexts. Within the family, I study relations among mother-child, father-child, and husband-wife relationships, and I examine how qualities of these relationships are associated with children's development. I have studied how a collaborating partnership between parent and child-care provider benefits parent-child and caregiver-child interactions and, in turn, relates to children's developing competence.

In my current research we have recently begun a study of preschoolers' self regulation skills and racial/ethnic disparities in school readiness. We are recruiting 360 low income preschoolers and their families to study how they develop skills in self regulation and other social and cognitive abilities that predict their later success in school.

Campbell, S., Spieker, S., Burchinal, M., Poe, M., and NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2006). Trajectories of aggression from toddlerhood to age 9 predict academic and social functioning through age 12. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47, 791-800. 2006 - Publication

NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2006). The relations of classroom contexts in the early elementary years to children's classroom and social behavior. In A.C. Huston and M.N. Ripke (Eds.), Developmental contexts in middle childhood: Bridges to adolescence and adulthood (pp. 217-236). New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006 - Publication

News Articles

A new study co-authored by a UT Dallas professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciencesdetails that the quality of interactions between young children and their parents is just as important — if not more important — as the quantity of words children experience in determining later language ability.

Dr. Margaret Tresch Owen, Robinson Family Professor and director of the Center for Children and Families, said previous studies have found that the small number of words heard by children in some homes — particularly in those of low-income families — has been strongly linked with poor language skills. This has become known as the “30 million word gap,” representing the differences found in both the number of words heard and vocabulary differences between children from low- and high-income families.

The research team will visit the preschoolers in their homes to assess their abilities to regulate and control their impulses and behavior from ages 2½ to 4 years, a period of time in which they are rapidly acquiring these skills and abilities.

A project conducted by researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas has entered its third round of funding in determining how various factors combine to influence the development of school readiness and success of urban minorities.

The Dallas Project on Education Pathways (DPReP), which began as the Dallas Preschool Readiness Project in 2009, is one of the nation’s first and longest longitudinal studies of childhood self-regulation development and its implications among African-American and Hispanic children.